The Ultimate Tablet for Tech-Savvy Sales Professionals

Sales Tech Talk is back again! We’ve reviewed the Microsoft Surface RT as a good value tablet and have reviewed it from a project manager’s perspective. The newest member of our marketing team, Joshua Doner tells us why he thinks the MS Surface is better than other tablets for salespeople. Let’s hear what this tech-savvy sales professional has to say about the Surface RT and how this mobile device can help to revolutionize the way of selling and increase overall sales productivity.

Before The Era of Mobility

Cold calling has long been a necessity that every sales rep must go through at some point in their career. Whether on the phone or in person, the act of soliciting business from someone, who is in many cases trying to avoid the call, uninterested or busy, can be uncomfortable at best. The discomfort is compounded when selling complex, intangible products or solutions such as software. Mobile technology is revolutionizing the way sales people sell. The Microsoft Surface RT offers salespeople a flexible, feature rich tablet computing experience unmatched by other mainstream devices.

Before the mass adoption of mobile computing devices, software sales relied upon brochures, feature sheets and fancy CD demos to support their sales pitch. Now with the advent of robust mobile computing devices, sales people have adopted them in their own ways to pitch, demo, present or simply stay connected.

In 2010, I had my first internship with an up and coming e-Procurement Cloud services company. I was brought on to market and sell a simplified version of their widely successful enterprise sized procurement solution. I began to organize my script and sales pitch, preparing for the cold call adventure I was about to embark on. As a young sales professional I was met with instant disappointment as I made 50 calls and struggled to gain traction, that is until the Apple iPad was launched.

The iPad was new, fresh and like everything Apple designed; elegant, easy to use and an eye catcher. As an early adopter it helped me gain traction with my cold calling, as people were excited to see our tools on my new iPad. The iPad was really good at demoing and consuming content, but lacked in the office applications that was a cornerstone of my workday.

I was really excited when the Microsoft Surface tablet was released in October 2012, due to its quality design, hardware features and office tools. It quickly became a replacement for my laptop, offering better mobility and style, than my bulky Lenovo ThinkPad. In addition the desktop mode and complimentary Windows 8 browser offer a recognizable browsing experience for demoing web-based applications.

Game Changing Features

Connecting to a projector? With the Microsoft Surface RT, connecting to a projector can be accomplished through a Micro HDMI port. With a USB 3.0 port, transferring large PowerPoint decks, files, video, music and other media to external drives is simple. Need to print and don’t have the printer drives installed? No problem. The Microsoft Surface RT comes compatible with universal drivers for many of the main printer brands. The Microsoft Surface RT is available with a laptop like tactile keyboard for an excellent typing experience.

The Results

For a tablet to stand out in a crowded segment for mobile computing devices, it needs to have a quality design and differentiating features. The Microsoft Surface RT has closed the gap between the tablet and laptop by offering a quality device with great productivity features. The Microsoft Surface RT is the ultimate tablet for the tech savvy sales professional looking for real productivity tools found in the laptop form factor.

Looking for more reviews of the Microsoft Surface RT? Check out the links below:

It’s a nice tablet, I agree. The problem is that Microsoft has not closed the gap on apps, until that happens iPads will rule the day.

Guest

Yes, it is a known problem that the App Store in Windows has not gained all of the quality applications like the well established Apple app store. To the point of this article, the main points from a productivity standpoint are the Surface RT has Microsoft Office as well as great hardware features built into the design. These include the Touch/Type cover, Micro HDMI, expandable memory, USB 3.0 and the stand. So for someone looking to compose a document, create a presentation or analyze data the Surface RT allows you to do all of that on a familiar form factor, that takes ques from a laptop.

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